GDSA, I’m all for encouraging people to invest in ‘Eat, Fast, Live Longer’ before embarking on 5:2 but wrt the ‘Clever Guts’ book, I’d borrow it from your library. I read through it for about an hour in a book shop and I didn’t find anything that I didn’t already know. It doesn’t quite feel right saying that on this site but it’s my honest opinion. With all the reading and research that you’ve been doing, I believe you’d find it very basic. If you want more in depth scientific information about the gut, I recommend ‘10% Human’ by Alana Collen (not Colon!). It’s a fascinating read. BayleafOz has also recommended a couple of books on guts. I believe one was, ‘Gut’ by Giulia Enders. This is in no way intended to take anything away from Dr M. whom I admire greatly – but he’s a medical journalist and has long moved on from 5:2. That doesn’t mean we have to.

Firgive typos please

GDSA – Those big gains from one overindulgence are so frustrating – even worse when it wasn’t great food. (I once gained 3kg overnight after a restaurant meal.) You really can seek reassurance in the weight gain being mainly fluid retention – unless the pizza that you ate actually weighed 1.5kg (which I doubt), then it can’t be anything else. These days I just don’t weigh myself after these things – I don’t need the stress and I know that if I resume my normal diet and do my FDs my body will get back to normal after a few days.

Cinque – I’m going to have to wait until there is room in my freezer before I bake bread again. I seem to be filling up all of the spare spaces with containers of soup. One loaf of bread usually lasts me at least a fortnight so I need to slice it and freeze it once it’s cooled.
Have you tried breads available through health-food or organic stores? I can’t get breads that I like from normal bakeries, but there is an organic & health food shop not far from me and they sell fresh bread from several bakers, including the Mylor Bakery that I mentioned earlier. The other thing I might suggest is an online search for true sourdough bakers in your area and then look at where they sell their bread. If you are happy to keep baking you may not need this, but I certainly like having a backup plan because sometimes I just don’t have the time or energy to bake myself.

Merry, Cinque & Mgrogan – it’s tragic that we have so many ME sufferers, but I really hope you can be a support to each other. Always helpful to have advice from someone who understands exactly what you are talking about and has practical suggestions from their own experience.

Mgrogan – glad your first week went well. There are a few of us with low TDEEs that need to stick to a pretty low calories level on the NFDs, so you aren’t alone with that one. Coupled with the way chronic illness impact our ability to be active it can mean the weight loss is slower than we’d like. But the weight does come of – it just requires a bit of patience.

Merry – don’t worry about the senior moment, I have more of those than I like to admit to myself these days. I used to have a perfect memory and when it started to fail me I panicked and asked my doctor if it could be early Alzheimers – he laughed and said “welcome to life after 50”. Now I make lists as I can’t rely on my brain to remember everything correctly anymore.

Hello fellow CFSer Mgrogan.
Need to say my CFS crashes aren’t from sugar, and I’m pretty sure chocolate doesn’t help (sigh). Much more connected with the OI (see my last post). Need to lie down and slash my activity for the next while and see how quickly I recover. My energy envelope shrinks dramatically and I have to work out how small it is now and how quickly it will start enlarging. A delicate process. It may last weeks.

Cheers to everyone who doesn’t have CFS!

LJoyce I only try bread from health food shops or maybe going out of my way to try a bakery that bakes sourdough made with stone ground flour cooked on the premises… (luckily only a couple of suburbs away). Still inferior to mine! (To my taste buds anyway!).
No problem usually as I have lots of flatbread, dosa, waffle and pancake recipes I can make to fill the bready space!
We do bake bread similarly though! I bake a big loaf and then cut it in two and put half in the freezer to have the following week (on average).

Have fun playing with the concept of ‘the day you aren’t very hungry’ a fascinating one to address. Good luck.

I’m preparing for an evening where I will eat my meal and that is all!

Good morning all.

Thinatlast thanks for your advice and I think you may be right that MM’s gut book probably won’t tell me anything I don’t already know seeing as Ive read so many food/health/fasting/Paleo etc books in the last 6 months. I have the Eat Fast Live Longer book and love it. Ive just started Amelia Freers – Eat,Nourish,Grow – really interesting reading and of similar ilk to how I am heading with my food/lifestyle changes. Ive also borrowed Janella Purcells – Elixir, havent started reading yet but I do know that her way of eating is a bit beyond me as its total full on vegan.

Another note to self – stop going to the library to borrow health/nutrition books and start concentrating on reading my study books !! You can see where my passion lies can’t you 🙂

FD yesterday worked a treat as Ive lost the weight I gained after that awful meal.

Spent all day yesterday building the chook house with just some finishing touches required today. Sunday morning were off to Jamestown to collect 6 new hens. They’re 26 weeks old so at the age where they would just be starting to lay. Im soooo excited about having our own eggs again. I hope our old hens get on well with the newbies, hence building a new enclosure and chookhouse so I can keep them seperated for awhile and introduce them slowly.

On a sad note Miss D’s favourite old hen ‘Mayor Dewie’ went to chookie heaven this week so only 6 out of the original 24 left now. Have to think of 6 names for the newbies – suggestions welcome.

Time for another coffee and then get the day underway. I’m on perch building and rainproofing duties while Miss D’s in charge of nesting boxes.

Happy Saturday everyone.

I’m so far behind in commenting that I’ll have to let the parrot/pumpkin conversation go. Yes, Cinque, the mung bean soup will be a regular but I too need more beans. Goody, you’re fasting tomorrow too.

CalifD, thanks for the link. I make milk kefir. I was introduced to it by someone I met on this thread, CharliesMum, who was kind enough to give me some grains. I managed to kill them while on a lengthy o/seas trip but then, PerthGirl, also met through this thread kindly gave me some more which are very happy. I’ve met seven SH posters for coffee and I’m very grateful for the friends I have made here over the 3 years, both real and cyber.

I’ve never tried 4:3, and certainly not B2B fasting. From what I’ve learned on these pages, it hasn’t made much difference to posters’ weight loss and may increase the tendency to compensate on the NFDs. Have fun at the reunion. I attended a 30 year reunion in the UK, hmm, that was over 10 years ago. The room was full of old looking people! I hadn’t seen anyone in 29 years but when they opened their mouths, their voices were unmistakably ‘them’.

GDSA, that sounds like a fun project, how many eggs do you anticipate per day? (I know you shouldn’t count your chickens before they’re hatched but what about the eggs?). My neighbour’s lad called one of his chickens ‘nugget’. I thought it a cute name or does it signify too much time spent at McDonalds?

Where are you Minka?

Hi Everyone. I had a chance to try the Marmite today. I like it, but I think I like the Vegemite better. They’re similar, but different flavors. It’s mostly spread on bread products, like the Vegemite, right?

Haha Thin, Australians win!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ed/c3/e9/edc3e941da1f029b3047e63bb30905f5.jpg

(Not that I’d rub it in or anything!)

Hi SHs, hope you are enjoying your weekend.

I have just finished my second week of no “extas” M-F. I’m already feeling so comfortable with it, that I’m ready to open the weekend up to FDs – further limiting my opportunity to eat unhealthy food on weekends. So I plan to do a FD tomorrow – company for you Cinque.

Not that I have actually gone bezerk on weekends so far – a little more volume than I’m eating through the week but no junk or sugar so far. I am definitely finding it easier to resist those discretionary foods than I was a couple of weeks ago – I’m really pleased about that. I have a sense of control that had felt like it was slipping away from me.

I’m going to try making some teff flour into flat breads for dinner tonight – I thought they’d go with the spicy chickpeas I’m making. Last time I tried using teff to make flatbread I followed the traditional Ethiopian recipie and allowed the batter to ferment with airborne yeast for 3 days. The flatbreads were so sour I couldn’t eat them – but the underlying flavour of the teff was fine. So this time I’ll use an Indian recipie for roti and just substitute the atta flour for teff and see if it works.

Merry – like the idea of a 5:2 conference, but boy would it take some organizing given how far and wide we’re spread. Although… S.A. is roughly in the middle of the country and we do have some great wineries…

Thin – I have the same trouble keeping up at the moment – I go away to think about what I want to say on an issue, and by the time I get back to the forum everyone’s moved on by 3 more topics. I wish I was someone who could quickly dash off a detailed reply, but I can’t, I need to think about it, especially if it’s an issue I think is important.

GDSA – enjoy the new chooks. My favourite hen name was always Gertrude. Somehow those old fashioned Victorian names always seemed appropriate for hens – Henrietta, Mabel, Thelma, Doreen, Hyacinth, Gladys, Martha, Bertha, Wilhelmina, Arabella, Daphne, Esme, Myrtle, Prudence. Hope the trip to Jamestown goes well, I haven’t been there in years (one of my great grandfather’s farmed there in the 1800s and I still have distant relatives scattered about the area).

I gave into the discussion about gut books and bought an ebook copy of 10% Human. ($10 on Amazon.au) I’m only about 4 chapters in, but I’ve definitely learned things I didn’t know before. Apparently our appendix does actually have a purpose – it’s a safe haven for gut bacteria to hide when we have a serious gastric infection like cholera, so that they can recolonise the bowel later – who knew? I wonder if they can hide from antibiotics in there too? If I find more interesting tid-bits as I read I’ll report back.

Oh I am the worst at remembering who said what, or even what’s being said. I get 1 message down and all the rest start blurring together, LOL, so now and again I ask that people overllook my lack/inability to remain on topic or knowing who said what. Some of that is bit of damaged memory caused by Hypothalic Dysfunction from my ME/CFS, and some of it is ditto to Thin’s comment about not being able to reply straightaway. But then, there is no requirement to answer anyway, so it’s lovely that we do.

Re the “National Conference” that’s not really a conference ( though that would be good too). About a year ago we discussed getting as many of us together as we could. Originally we thought a few of us could get to Melbourne this month. Melbourne because that’s where Cinque is and a few of us could possibly getvto Melbourne, but that idea obviously didn’t get carried on.

But some of us do manage to meet now and then. So far I’ve met Cinque (in Melbourne), Intesha – at my place, and her father was worried about her meeting an axe murderer off the internet! I’ve also met Joffy when he holidayed not far from me, and we’ll meet up again on his next holiday here. Intesha has driven past Joffy when he was working outside one day! Thin has met quite a few of ou West Australian 5:2ers. Minka has met Cinque and Minka and I have tried but failed to get together.

Maybe we should look at another possible group meet up sometime in the future.

Onwards and Downwards,
Merry

Merry I think it’s great that 5:2 worked despite the ME. Even a slow pace gets you to goal in the end, it’s just a more sedate journey.

As I mentioned earlier, I experimented with teff flour in flatbreads this afternoon. I made the roti flatbreads to go with my dinner from brown teff seed flour. I ended up having to use 50% teff and 50% atta four as the lack of gluten in teff meant that it tore when I tried to roll it. I now understand why all traditional recipies for teff are batters that you pour rather than dough that you roll or shape. With the addition of the atta flour and a bit more finger pressing rather than rolling I managed to shape them into flatbreads and cooked them in a cast iron skillet. The flavour was lovely and the cooked texture of the flatbread was also good. Once cooked they handled like a normal roti.
For anyone wanting to try them, I used: 1/2 cup brown teff flour, 1/2 cup atta (plain wholemeal) flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 cup natural yoghurt, 1/4 cup water. Mix into a dough with a fork, adjusting the flour quantity if required. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed (I left it there for the afternoon). Divide the dough into 4 pieces and roll into balls. Flatten on a floured bench (use atta flour not teff for rolling),and roll gently with a rolling pin until they are the about 15-18cm diameter. (You’ll need to be generous with flour under and on the dough when rolling.) I also sprinkled the top with sesame seeds when I was rolling. I cooked them in a cast iron skillet over a low flame. I used about 1/4 tsp butter to cook each one (ghee would have been better but I didn’t have any). They took approximately 90 seconds on each side. The finished flatbreads are dark brown because of the colour of the teff flour (about the same colour as a dark rye bread). The flavour is mild and very nice – more flavour and nuttier than a normal flour.

I’ll try adding teff to normal bread dough next time I make some.

Still reading the “10% Human” book and found a quote worth sharing:
With each meal you make, spare a thought for your microbes. What would they like you to put in your mouth today?
Looks like my meal planning is about to get more difficult. I’m going to have to ask my gut flora for a show of hands on what everyone wants for dinner tonight. I hope they get to consensus quickly.

Ha ha ha…Ljoyce😃

I’ve had a teff pancake thingy made by an Ethipian. It was yummy, soongy sort of. I bought some teff flour recently – will have a go this week some time.

You, Cinque snd Minka know so many ingredients and dushes I’ve never heard of! So what is atta flour when it’s at home?

I need sleep………zzzxz

Hi All,

I’m still around! Laptop was out of service for a week and I’ve again been flat out busy, though am still fasting (today, in fact!). I needed a reset, that’s for sure! I’ve been enjoying reading posts, though am again a couple pages behind. Cheers to oldies and newbies!

I just ordered the “10% Human” book. I should have it Monday with my Prime account. I can’t believe the paperback was less expensive than the digital copy by a few cents. I do like to have a paper copy of books like this though. I was happy to see that there’s a free “start reading now” copy of a few chapters, so I can start reading. This looks like the type of book that I’ll really like, with all my fermenting of things like cabbage, beets, carrots, Kombucha and kefir. I truly believe in the power of probiotics.

I had C-Diff several years ago when I must have had the bacteria dormant in my gut, unbeknownst to me. After a dentist prescribed a strong antibiotic as a prophylactic for a root canal repair, that killed off most of my good gut bacteria, and the C-Diff took over. I was so sick I could barely get out of bed. I felt too sick to walk from the car into a doctor’s office and my regular doc was on vacation. My sister who lives with us was so exasperated at me for refusing to go that she told some of her co-workers that she wished I was a cat so she could just shove me into a carrier and take me there!

My husband took off of work and took me to a walk in clinic who assessed my symptoms, never asking about antibiotics, and I had no idea at the time they were connected. That doctor prescribed Cipro, which I found out later was the second worst thing I could have taken. Several days later I was even sicker and my stomach was starting to swell. I had diarrhea so bad and it looked like guacamole. I was in tears when I went to visit “Dr. Google” entering my symptoms. (The nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office thought it was Giardia even though I hadn’t been exposed to bad drinking water.) Google came up with the diagnosis right away. When I read about the antibiotics I knew right away that was it. I finally got my doctor’s office to prescribe one of 2 drugs that would get rid of it. Still, it took months to get back to normal. I took some probiotic capsules that finally helped. I knew nothing about fermenting foods at the time or that store bought yogurt had most of the good stuff killed off in order to package it.

Sorry for the long post, but it’s such a dramatic example of how important a healthy gut is and how all the good bacteria protects us in a very real way, especially if we’ve picked up some bad stuff in a hospital or somewhere else, unknowingly, because our good bacteria keeps it in check. I’m a firm believer in home fermented foods for good bacteria. And I’m one of those people who has a great deal of faith in Google for diagnostics. I truly believe it saved my life.

Yay its chook collection day.

Cinque thank you for the links very interesting reading.

Thinatlast Ive always had Isa Browns which are good layers so anticipate 5 to 6 eggs per week per chook on average. I have a couple of friends who take any excess eggs off my hands.

Ljoyce Im rather fond of names from yesteryear too. I did suggest to Miss D we name the chooks Fried, Poached, Scrambled, Omlette etc however she was not impressed. So we settled on naming 3 each – I have picked Margo, Edith and Agnes (named after Gru’s children from the Dispicable Me movies) and Miss D is yet to decide.

With all the talk of gut microbes I cant get the picture of the little creatures from the ‘Have you had your inner health plus today’ TV advert out of my head now. Little Minion type creatures running around inside me…..aahhhhh.

Merryme I’m with you I so easily lose track of who said what. I always post from my phone and the little screen can be frustrating at times but handy to post ‘on the run’.

What a shame we have to drive through the little country town today that has my favourite Op Shop….hahaha Miss D will role her eyes at me again for sure.

Waiting for sun up before we hit the road (just under 2 hour drive each way to collect chooks) as the kangaroos are out and about big time at the moment. There was even one bouncing through the CBD of a nearby regional town (13,000 people) yesterday. The local Plod put out a warning on social media about it. I just love living in the country 🐣🐓🐤🐔🐥

Ha autofinish!

Good morning everyone!

The ABC TV show “Ask the Doctor’ last Tuesday was about the gut. Very basic, but noted that there are more microbes in our gut than stars in the Milky Way. (I think it was on that show anyway!)
Won’t you have fun trying to get consensus LJoyce!
But I am glad all those antibiotics have kept you alive.

The teff flour sounds wonderful, and so do your flatbreads!
Good on you for trying the fermented injera recipe too!

Hi Minka! Glad your laptop is working again! It seems like you must have been writing about midnight so not sure which day you fasted, today or yesterday, but cheers either way! (hopeless with time stamps)

Gday, what great names for the lovely chooks! Have a wonderful day collecting them! Safe drive! Hope the Op Shop is open! I hope the hens have a good trip too and settle happily in their new home.

Good Fasty McFast Day morning to Thin and all the Sunday fasters!
Wouldn’t a National Conference be fun! If only we all had teleporters!

Merry you are so good at giving overviews. It is a lovely, unifying thing you do.

Cali what a horrible time you had with your gut health. So glad you were able to recover.

Best wishes to everyone

A Skype conference call could be possible but scary! I enjoyed all the posts while having my first fasty coffee with A&C milk.

‘10% Human’ underscores how over-use of antibiotics is not only detrimental to the individual but to the population at large. If doctors don’t stop over-prescribing, we are in grave danger of them becoming ineffective where we really need them – putting at risk surgeries like amputations that we’ve come to view as routine. Patients also have an expectation of receiving a prescription even before it’s confirmed that their ailment is bacterial so GPs feel ‘pressured’ to prescribe.

An article in this month’s ‘Scientific American’ claims there is no health benefit in probiotics for the already healthy gut. Just like with vitamins which decades of research proved totally unnecessary for most adults and even dangerous for some being linked to various cancers, it hasn’t stopped marketers from pushing another nutritional craze. The human gut contains tens of trillions of bacteria vs. 100 million to a few hundred billion in a typical probiotic serve or pill so are unlikely to survive. This doesn’t mean there aren’t benefits for certain conditions such as IBS. The future of all this seems to suggest individual assessment of gut biome and custom-designed probiotics.

A second article in this same July edition explains how unrelated gut surgery can reverse diabetes. Fascinating! I don’t know if you can view Scientific American on-line but, if interested, the article is entitled, Operation: Diabetes. The previous one, ‘Probiotics Are No Panacea’.

Reading this article was a bit deflating as I like the idea of feeding my gut companions kefir & other fermented foods to keep them happy. According to ‘10% Human’, the best start you can have for your gut comes from a vaginal birth and drinking breast milk. Then a diet comprising a wide variety of foods with a lot of plant material keeps the little guys happy.

Time for the second A&C coffee. Sounds unhealthy. It’s chicken miso soup for me tonight Cinque.

P.S. Morning LJ, your post wasn’t there when I started mine. Be strong, you can do it!

Wow, well done with the brunch LJ! And that will be a hearty, warming FD dinner. Reminds me of my Hairy Bikers’ Healthy Cottage Pie to be eaten with a teaspoon and very slowly, savouring every delicious bite!

It’s a mild, partly sunny day here today. Four dolphins spotted on my walk! Hurray for FDs.

Hello Minka. Please come back. Did you know that CalifD is from your neck of the woods?

CalifD, that’s a scary story about the dentist’s prescription. C. diff. was discussed in the book but I can’t remember it all now – I believe it was found to be elevated in patients with autism. Don’t quote me on that.

Yes, tea for me too. Madame Flavour’s choc & orange ceylon. Feels a bit naughty on a FD.

Thanks for posting the link – I tried to find it but it required our membership number to view. I too take vit. D, very reluctantly and I absolutely hate the idea of being on something ‘for life’ but I had a squamous cell skin cancer and was instructed to stay out of the sun. This is the result. You can’t win!

I’ll continue taking my home-cultivated kefir despite having no health issues. I think it was you who mentioned about the commercial probiotics having had most of the useful bacteria killed off in the pasteurisation process (something else I’d meant to agree with but the thread got away from me). I’m so sceptical of food manufacturers. They’re trying to sell me stuff I don’t need and my job is to resist. I think they’re now trying to capitalise on the public’s growing infatuation of gut microbiota.

Have you read much about faecal transfer? Staggering and literally instant results have been reported.

Thank you Merry, Cinque, Minka, mgrogan for reminding me not to take good health for granted. I appreciate all you’ve achieved given that your lot is so much harder. Now that Dr M. has given me back my best chance at maintaining my health through 5:2, I endeavour to nurture it. One reason I’m happy to wholeheartedly embrace a fast day.

He he. So what are you up to today? Is it still very hot there?

Yes, it got up to about 37 here today. Right now it’s around 25. We’re waiting for it to go down a little more so we can open the windows, turn off the air conditioning, and turn on the attic fan. It sucks the cooler air in through the windows and blows it into the attic and ultimately, outside. We keep the thermostat for the air conditioner at about 28. Any cooler than that makes it stay on almost continuously and the electric bill gets very expensive.

There are already a lot of wild fires in California because of the heat and sometimes wind. Around us, there are lots of huge Oak trees, so fires make us nervous. I guess you have problems with fires there in the summers too.

Yes, we do have devastating bush fires downunder. Strangely though, we had an almost non-existent bush fire season here in the SW of the country this past summer. We have an odd relationship with bush fires because my OH is a pilot and sometimes derives his income from fighting fires. Not this year though.

Cinque, you put that so well! I can’t believe how well you wrote that. Well, actually I shouldn’t be surprised. Has your sister loaned you her copy of ‘10% Human’ yet? I can’t wait to hear what you think of it.

Thanks for that sauerkraut article link CalifD which leads to a recipe link. I may give that a go!

I hope you get warmed up Cinque. I hope you get cooled down CalifD.

I just decide to look at the online site for my nearest organic & health food shop.
They don’t have kefir grains but they do have the powder sachets. They also have lots of ready fermented products including yoghurt, juice, coconut water & milk (cow, goat, camel, coconut) and something called kombucha which looks like a ginger flavoured drink. They are expensive, but a useful way to see what I like before buying the means to make it myself – which is sensible. Compared to the cost of probiotic capsules I think this is a very viable alternative.

Kombucha is fermented tea, I’ve never tried it. I think Minka makes it but I may have made that up. I quite like kimchi but not enough to include it often. If you can find someone who can pass some kefir grains onto you, you’re laughing. They could potentially be 1000 years old! How cool is that? Tradition dictates that they can only be given away, never sold. Those I got from PerthGirl have already doubled in volume and I’d happily share them with you if you were closer. I’m sure if you put some feelers out, someone will know someone who has some to spare. The powdered form is not the same thing. I agree that buying store bought kefir is a good way of first finding out whether you like it, but it’s likely it will have been ‘messed with’ to agree with the mass-consumer palate. My own tastes slightly sour, I make it with FF milk and only take a very small glassful 5 days a week. Someone bought me some store-bought kefir the other day and it tasted quite different.